Journeying across Ghana’s savannahs and cities, John Nott investigates how nutrition and capitalism have intersected to define health from colonial rule to the present.

Between Feast and Famine unravels the intertwined histories of food, health, and capitalism in Ghana, charting the country’s shifting nutritional landscape from colonial-era hunger crises to contemporary epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Moving between Ghana’s diverse ecological and economic zones, John Nott excavates how uneven capitalist transformation reshaped diets and childhood nutrition across the twentieth century. At the heart of this story is the evolving science of nutrition itself, from its colonial-era applications to its role in shaping modern health policies.

Using a new historical approach, Between Feast and Famine exposes how global scientific debates and local lived realities co-produced the country’s shifting nutritional conditions. A necessary contribution to African history and medical humanities, this book debunks preconceived notions about hunger and public health, suggesting crucial insights into the complex relationship between food systems and human well-being.

John Nott is a research fellow in science, technology, and innovation studies at the University of Edinburgh.

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List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements

1 Nutrition in African history, the history of African nutrition
2 African foodways, British government, and the new science of nutrition
3 Food and health in the nineteenth century
4 Feeding the cocoa boom, c.1896-1957
5 Hunger in the ‘labour reservoir’, c.1896-1957
6 Feeding Ghanaian independence, c.1957-1983
7 Towards a political economy of postcolonial nutrition
8 Neoliberal nutrition, c.1983-2000
9 Space, time, and the nature of nutrition in the twenty-first century

References
Index